Broken Down: A Novel, page 2
2
The next morning, I woke up with a dry mouth and completely disoriented. I smacked my lips together a few times and blinked my eyes, trying to get my bearings.
Where am I?
Then the memories of yesterday started to flood back, organize themselves, and I remembered I was in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I sighed and went to the bathroom to freshen up. I didn’t even bother taking a shower, however, given how scratchy the towels appeared. In the lobby, there was a free breakfast which consisted of some stale bread products and coffee. I took the coffee, ignored the crunchy looking muffins, and checked out.
I was back on the road again just after 9, and since I’d managed to drive all the way past Grand Junction the day before, it wouldn’t be long before I arrived in Denver. The next time I had to stop to get gas, I finally decided it was time to call my parents, something I’d been putting off since yesterday morning.
“Hello?” My mom answered, and it sounded like she didn’t know who would be on the other line, even though she had caller ID on her cell.
“Mom,” I said. “It’s me. Raina.”
“Oh hi, dear. Sorry, I picked up without looking. Your father and I are at the airport—”
“Airport? Where are you going?”
“Didn’t we tell you?”
I tried to think back to the last time I’d spoken to either of my parents, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, recall when that was. “Tell me what?”
“We’re going on a cruise!” she said. “Ten days in Alaska. Can you believe it? Alaska!”
“Oh, wow. That’s—that’ll be amazing.”
“We hope so,” she said. “We’ve been talking about taking this cruise for years.”
They had?
“So you guys leave today, and then you won’t be back for ten days?”
“That’s the plan.” She paused. “Is everything all right? Did something happen?”
“Everything is fine,” I said. “Why would you think something happened?”
“I don’t know. I guess we just haven’t heard from you in a while, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay. How’s Ethan? And the bookstore?”
“Ethan and I—how do I say this? We’re not together anymore, Mom. I moved out of the house and I was calling to let you know that I am coming to Denver. If it’s all right with you and Dad, I was hoping I could crash with you for a little while.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Is that your definition of everything being okay?”
“It’s for the best,” I said, only because it sounded like something people say.
“I hadn’t realized the two of you were having problems. The last time we saw you, you seemed so happy.” I heard the gas pump click and I got back out of the car.
It would’ve been years ago, the last time my mom saw Ethan and me together. “Yeah, well, I didn’t realize we were having problems either. I wasn’t having problems, but apparently Ethan has been feeling unsatisfied in our marriage for some time. I think, even though he didn’t say it outright, that he’s fallen in love with another woman. His co-worker.”
“Honey, that’s awful, I’m so sorry!” She gasped. “This is all so much. Perhaps your dad and I should stay home, that way we can be here when you get into town.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly. I balanced the phone against my shoulder as I put the pump away and said ‘no’ to getting a receipt. “I don’t want you to cancel your trip, you sounded like you were really excited about it. I’ll be fine, Mom, for real. You know I’ve always been good at taking care of myself. That hasn’t changed.”
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t like the idea of you sitting in the house for ten days completely alone.”
“I won’t be there for ten days,” I said. “I still have my job at the bookstore, which I’m not necessarily planning on giving up. I just needed to get away for a few days, that’s all. Actually, it sounds relaxing, having the whole house to myself. It’ll give me time to clear my head, figure out what I’m going to do next.”
“Are you sure? Because there’s still time to cancel and we can get a partial refund.”
“Don’t cancel,” I said. “Really. Don’t.” I was back in the car now, and thankfully no one was waiting for the pump so I could take my time getting out of the way.
“Okay then. You have a key, and just remember we have that alarm system thing. The code is just the number 6, you put it in 6 times in a row.”
I laughed. “What’s the point in having an alarm system if you’re going to make your code so easy to guess?”
“It’s the only way your father can remember it. Whenever I try to make it more complicated, he forgets, gets frustrated, and lets the thing beep at him until the cops are called and it’s a whole mess. Trust me, it’s easier this way.”
“Whatever you say.” I turned the key in the ignition. “Have a good trip, and tell Dad I say hi.”
“Will do honey. Will we see you when we get back?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But who knows? Everything is really up in the air right now.”
The car started acting weird right in between two small towns, Glenwood Springs and a town that was somehow even smaller than Glenwood Springs, and one I’d never even heard of, called Aria. I didn’t know anything about motor vehicles, but it appeared that every time I changed speed, either going faster or slower, the car was having trouble switching into the correct gear. It would jerk, violently, and there was a terrible clunking noise that accompanied the movement. I tried to ignore it at first, thinking it might just go away if I kept driving. Of course, it didn’t, and then I saw smoke coming out of the hood just as I took the exit into the town and inched past the sign that said Welcome to Aria.
I pulled over onto the side of the road and turned the car off as quickly as I could.
For a while, I just sat there.
I didn’t know what else to do. It would do no good for me to open up the hood and take a look, seeing as I would have no idea what I was looking at or how to fix it. I didn’t have anyone in the area I could call for help. Really, though, the main reason I sat for near-twenty minutes just staring at the road ahead was because I felt like I had hit a brick wall.
What was I doing? Where was I going?
I couldn’t decide what was more unlike me, driving to stay in my parents’ empty house for an undetermined amount of time, or not giving my boss notice that I was going out of town and wouldn’t be there for my shift the following afternoon. No, I realized, what was by far the most unlike me was going to a car dealership and paying cash for a clunker in the back parking lot.
I slammed my hands against the steering wheel.
“Ugh!” I shouted. “Piece of crap!”
It felt good, I realized, to release some of the pent-up anger I’d been harboring, so I let my hands come back down a second time. And a third. After that, my palms began to hurt, so I stopped and got out of the car. It was September, and thankfully it hadn’t gotten too cold yet. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked up the number for the nearest mechanic that might be able to come give me a tow. I found a listing for a single auto repair shop in Aria. It had a grand total of three Yelp reviews, all of which were very positive, and there was one picture which featured a woman with an afro and grease-stained coveralls. She was giving a thumbs up to the person taking the shot, with her other hand resting on the hood of a gorgeous vintage car.
I called the number and waited as it rang and rang.
Finally, just as I was about to hang up, someone answered in a gruff voice.
“You’ve got Ursula,” the woman said.
“Oh, uh, hi. I’m calling because I’m stranded on the side of the road. I’m in Aria, I actually am right next to the welcome sign.”
“You’re where? I can’t hear you very well.”
I could barely make out what she was saying. “I said I’m right past the welcome sign!” I cupped my free ear and practically yelled into the phone. “Did you hear that? I just arrived in town, coming from the west.”
“Coming from the vet?” she said. “What?”
I repeated my location a third time, and then walked around a bit next to the car to look for a place where I might get better service. Eventually, I was able to communicate the situation to her, and she said she would be around as soon as she could to take a look at the damage.
Not many cars came by while I waited, and I got the sense that this wasn’t an area where many people visited. It was a drive-through kind of town, like many other small towns like it across the country. Growing up, the few times my parents and I had gone on road trips, I always hated stopping along the way. I wanted to get to the destination as fast as possible, and it bothered me to no end every time my dad wanted to stop to look at some sort of tourist attraction—like the world’s biggest thermometer—or when my mom requested we stop to check out the local antique stores. For me, the vacation started once we got there, and the journey was nothing more than movement from point A to point B.
I don’t think I’d like to go on a cruise, I thought to myself, remembering the trip my parents were embarking on. Cruises are just road trips, but on water and with way more stops.
The wind started to pick up, so I got back in the car, and not half an hour later did I spot a red truck coming down the road with a tow-rig on the back. The mechanic flipped a U in front of me and backed up so that she could get the tow set up if need be. When she got out, I saw she was wearing the same coveralls she’d had on in the photo online.
I stuck my hand out to shake, but she didn’t return the gesture.
“I’ve got grease on my hands,” she said. “I came straight over from a different job, didn’t have time to wash up.”
Without introducing herself, she walked over to my car and popped the hood. She said nothing, and I stood watching her bent over and frowning for a good three minutes. Finally, she straightened up and slapped her hands together a few times.
“Well, it’s not looking too good,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
She put a hand on her hip and flashed me a smile. “What isn’t wrong is a better question. Where’d you buy this hunk of junk anyway?”
“This girl, she worked at the dealership where I went. It’s her old car. She sold it to me for cheap in the parking lot when her boss wasn’t looking.”
She laughed. “Wow, never heard that one before. Either way, I won’t be able to fix this up here. I need to take this monster back to my shop where my tools are. It’s also likely that I’ll have to order a few parts, which might take a while.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “How long is a while?”
She shrugged. “Few weeks.”
“I can’t wait a few weeks! I have to get to Denver.”
“Take the bus,” she suggested. “Call an Uber, I don’t know. All I’m saying is that there’s no way that thing is driving out of here anytime soon.”
I sighed as she got to work getting the car ready to tow. I couldn’t afford to take an Uber all the way to Denver, and I didn’t feel like getting on a bus after a day and a half of being stuck in the car. My back was killing me, and the stress of my car breaking down was starting to give me a headache. I needed a rest, maybe a decent meal, and hopefully I’d be able to figure out what to do next the following morning, after a good night’s sleep.
“Is there a motel in town?” I asked. “I’ll need some place to spend the night.”
Driving through town, I couldn’t help but notice how adorable everything was. All the buildings were small, red-brick, and looked to be older than most of the buildings one typically encounters in the Southwest. We drove past Aria Elementary School, which was the size of a shoebox. There were only a handful of kids running around outside, and the same went for the middle and high school, which were housed in similar buildings one block over.
“What’s the population of this town?” I asked.
“Not sure,” she said. “But it’s under 2,000, that much I know.”
“How?”
She smirked. “Our mayor, he’s kind of a lunatic, he was all worried a few years back when he noticed that more people were moving out of large cities and finding cheaper houses in the small towns. He’d read some study, and he crunched the numbers himself, and came to the conclusion that Aria cannot possibly be home to more than 2,000 people. Not unless we were willing to make some major changes, which of course he was not.”
“I see. But what does everyone do out here? Is there some industry that keeps the town afloat?”
We stopped at a four-way stop, but there was no light, only a stop sign, despite the fact we looked to be in the heart of town.
“There used to be a mine, but that’s since closed down. Mostly, we’re just one of the small towns with their own little economy. The money just gets passed around amongst ourselves. In the summer, we get a few more tourists driving through, they bring in a small amount of money—people headed to Denver and need a place to sleep. Like you.”
“Uh huh, and where do they rest their heads? I’m not seeing the bed and breakfast you mentioned.”
“I don’t think I used the term bed and breakfast,” she said, pulling off the main road and driving into what appeared to be the garage next to her shop. “That’s being a little generous.”
She didn’t say anything further, and in fact she got out of the car and closed the door behind her before I could ask for clarification. I hurried and followed her inside the shop.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You told me you knew of a place for me to stay.”
Still ignoring me, she walked over to the phone mounted on the wall and dialed. A few seconds later, someone answered on the other line.
“Hi, Beth? Hey, it’s Ursula. Yeah, listen, I’ve got another one.” She looked at me. “She looks to be about my age, clean, probably not a troublemaker.” She nodded a few times and then called out to me, “Hey, what’s your name again?” I told her. “She says her name is Raina,” she said into the phone. “Yeah, Raina, like the weather with an a on the end…. She seems nice enough, yeah. Okay, I’ll tell her you’ll be here shortly. Buh bye.”
She hung up and I stood there waiting for an explanation.
“That was Bethany, or Mrs. Jennings, if you’re one of her students. Anyway, she’s sort of like the unofficial den mother of Aria. You’re not the first person to find themselves stranded here on their way toward something bigger and better, and since we don’t have a real motel or hotel, Bethany can usually be counted on to lend a helping hand. She’ll let you sleep in her guest bedroom. Free of charge.”
“That’s—” I gawked. “But she doesn’t even know me!”
“That’s Beth for you.”
“I could be a criminal,” I said. “I could rob her.”
Ursula took a step forward. “But you’re not going to do that. Right? Because, if you did do that, you’d have me to answer to. More than that, you’d have almost the entire town. Bethany is beloved in Aria, and if you did anything to hurt her—”
I put my hands up to cool her down. “It was a joke, I swear! I would never rob anyone, especially not someone who was so kindly opening up their house to me.”
Ursula stared me down for a moment longer and then nodded. “Good. Well, she’ll be here in a bit. Better get your stuff out of the car, fill out this form for me, and I’ll start working on getting that thing fixed first thing tomorrow morning.”
The phone rang, and she picked it up without saying another word to me.
I filled out the form she’d pointed to sitting on the counter by the phone, then went outside to collect my things and waited on the curb for a woman named Bethany.
3
I was shocked to learn Bethany was actually a few years older than my parents. She looked and acted like a woman half her age. She had more energy than I was expecting, and even hopped out of the car when she arrived and helped me put my bags in the trunk. She greeted me with a big smile, and on the drive home she was all chatter.
She told me that she’d lived in Aria her entire life, had gotten married and had her son here, and never regretted a single day she spent in the little town. She let slip what year she was born, that’s how I knew she was going on 65. Otherwise, I would’ve guessed she wasn’t a day over 50. She had bright, curious blue eyes and long blondish-gray hair. She wore blue jeans and an oversized T-shirt, which was paint stained, and she carried herself with such confidence I was actually a little jealous.
Her house was small but cute, with a big backyard. Bethany showed me to my room, which was down the hall on the main level, right next to the kitchen. “I’m not an early riser,” she told me. “So don’t worry about me waking you up in the morning. Likely, you’ll be up before me.”
“I’m not a morning person either,” I said. “Never have been.”
Bethany smiled. “Me neither! My son, he wakes up at the crack of dawn, and I never understood how he could live like that. Anyway, I’ll let you get settled. I’m going to put the kettle on the stove for some tea, please come join me if you’d like.”
I thanked her for what had to be the fifth time, and she left, shutting the bedroom door behind her.
Alone in the room, I pushed my stuff against the far wall and sat down on the bed. It was plush, and decorated with what I guessed was a hand-made knitted afghan. I lay down and let out one long, heavy exhale. It had been a very dramatic two days, and I’d had nothing but time to process my emotions while I was driving. It was exhausting work, however, thinking about my impending divorce and trying to decide how I actually felt about it all. I hadn’t realized how tired I was until I lay back and let my body relax into the mattress. My eyes fluttered open and closed a few times, I let out a big yawn, and moments thereafter, was asleep.
It was dusk when I woke up. I blinked a few times, facing the window, and watched as a hummingbird flew past, pausing for a moment to drink from a flower in the pot on the sill outside.
